Compass Reflection (Grace)

In our Traditions of Giving and Serving in America class, we were each assigned a nonprofit in Porter County to profile. The profile includes the nonprofit’s financial status, information from their website, and our impressions from our site visits. I chose the Compass Education Program because I had never heard about the program, but I assumed that their mission would include education. In my early correspondence with the director, Jessica Burkman, I learned that Compass had recently changed their name to the Compass International Family Center.
I visited Compass on April 4th, during their program time. Compass currently operates out of an old school building near downtown Valparaiso. The students were already in their classes when I arrived, and I could hear children playing down the hallway. Jessica gave me a tour of the classrooms, where the students are split up by age groups, and there is a separate classroom for their citizenship class. I heard mixtures of Spanish, English, and other languages as I took my tour, and I began to understand the program’s shift to an international focus. When I sat down with Jessica after the tour she explained that the program had started with a focus on the Hispanic community. She explained that she met a Kurdish family at a park in Valparaiso and invited them to the program, which prompted further invitations extended to international families. I was particularly curious about how they were able to teach English to students who did not even speak the same native language. Jessica explained that in addition to the volunteer teachers, the program also relies on their more advanced students to help beginner students.
They form friendships as they all work together with the goal of learning English so that they can communicate more easily with their children who learn English at school.
Compass has both social and educational goals. They want their students to feel comfortable in their new country, speaking their new language. For both their young and

especially their adult students, Compass can be one of the few times that they get to interact with other non-native English speakers. Compass is also completely free so that families can learn English without having their families make economic sacrifices. Jessica said that families love coming to Compass because they can all learn at the same time and in one place. The student’s feelings about the program were obvious as they laughed, talked, and worked with each other throughout their classes that night. 

Our class recently had the chance to visit the Hull House museum in Chicago in order to learn more about Jane Addams and her ideas of philanthropy. It was a great trip and an amazing experience.

The Overhead Myth: Stifling Organizations with Good Intentions (Samantha)

Throughout the duration of this course, and within the real world, it can be easy to demonize overhead spending in non-profits. Donors want the emotional benefit of their dollars being spent directly on goods or services for clients. Isn’t this direct measure of spending, with as little overhead as possible, the best way to support the cause? Our authors grapple with the same questions. On the one hand, we see Booker T. Washington, committed to a life of poverty as the effective CEO of Tuskegee Institute in his nonprofit and fundraising pursuits. He uses rhetoric that appeals to donors desire for low overhead, utilizing the labor of students rather than outside professionals and touting his cost cutting measures that allow donations to go directly to the cause itself. Contrastingly, we experience Jane Addams of Hull House. Though challenged by outsiders for her privileged lifestyle, and internally conflicted by the ways she reconciles her lifestyle with the poverty of those she serves, Addams ultimately decides that overhead is not a bad thing. Her upper middle class lifestyle allows her to interact with politicians and large donors, raise more money, receive guiding education, and ultimately expand and lead her organization in more effective ways than would have been possible without the “overhead.” So the net result was money and growth.

As a class, today we experienced the TED talk, “The Way We Think About Charity is Dead Wrong.” In it, Dan Pallotta challenges the ways in which donors unintentionally suffocate organizations by demanding virtually non-existent overhead costs. He points out two ways in which consumers hold non-profit and private organizations to contrasting standards. The lies of overhead ultimately: 1) make us think that “overhead”  is not part of “the cause” and 2) forces charities to forego what they need to grow. I would recommend the talk (linked to this blog) to anyone active within the philanthropic world, as a donor, volunteer, or member of an organization. Ultimately, the next time you find yourself in a situation to give, think twice before using low overhead as an indicator of an organization’s success. Unknowingly, you may be stifling the growth, innovation, and scale of an organization you truly care for.  

https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pallotta_the_way_we_think_about_charity_is_dead_wrong#t-902685

Chasing Dreams Nonprofit Reflection (Alyssa)

After I chose my non-profit, I had to sit down and do a lot of research because I was unsure what exactly the organization did.  Once I found Chasing Dreams’ website, I was in awe of everything they were doing.  Chasing Dreams opened its doors five years ago in the basement of the creator's house.  Denise Babjak started the organization because her daughter was born with Down Syndrome and Denise realized that there was not a lot of information out there for parents who have children with special needs.  When she opened Chasing Dreams, her main goal was to provide information and a support group for the parents and a learning center for the children.

Meeting with Denise Babjak really opened my eyes to the fact that there really is not a lot of information or affordable programs for families who have children with special needs.  The building they are using now has a computer room, a kitchen, an art room, a tutoring room, a playroom, and a “safe” room where children go if they need to take a break from whatever it is they are doing.

Currently, 478 children are being helped by Chasing Dreams, which survives only on private grants and donations.  When it first started, for two and a half years, it was funded by only Denise and her husband.  Seeing the passion she had for what she did was incredible.  When we were talking about funding and keeping Chasing Dreams running she said that she would do whatever it took to keep the organization running because of how much they are able to help so many people, at no cost to them, which is really helpful because a lot of organizations are too expensive for some families.

After we were done talking about all of the formal information for Chasing Dreams, she mentioned that they have a summer program every year to give special needs children the same experiences other children have. I was so moved by her passion for the organization and the families involved that I couldn’t help but to volunteer to help at the summer program.  The experience I had meeting Denise Babjak and seeing the facility is one I am unlikely to ever forget and hopefully I will be able to volunteer more in the future to make sure this amazing organization stays open.

Hilltop Neighborhood House Reflections (Gabriela)

When I was younger, I was always looking for ways to get ahead in life- always putting my own needs and wants above the people around. But when I got the chance, when it did not interfere with my own path, I would lend a hand to those who needed it. Even in the most miniscule ways, I realized the joy I got from helping others, from being a positive influence in someone else’s life. As time went on, I applied this good feeling of helping others to something more centered around helping others who were younger than I. Throughout junior high and high school, I was a student-athlete mentor and leader, I was a tutor, I provided French horn lessons and singing lessons to families who could not afford a professional coach, and I babysat and nannied year-round. Through all these activities I realized my love for children and being a good role model for them was where my passions lied. It wasn’t until I came to Valparaiso University that I truly could immerse myself within educating, mentoring, and working with children every day.

            Hilltop Neighborhood House was the first job I acquired while being a student at VU. Almost every day I would be working with children 5 years and younger, providing care and education to them during our 6-8 hour periods together. It was so incredibly fulfilling and fun. But it was almost too easy… I found myself questioning things like, “Am I even helping these children? Or am I helping their parents? What kind of relationship am I making with these children who barely remember my name, even though I work with them every day?”- so I quit my job with Hilltop. My feelings of not being needed in a meaningful way was hindering on my love for and the ease of spending my free hours with these little children.

            What many people don’t know is that Hilltop has another location called Hilltop Too: Walt’s Place- which provide after-school care and homework help to school-age children in the area. Most of these children come from low-income homes and with backgrounds a of bad or broken home life. Thankfully, after quitting my job at Hilltop, I was offered the opportunity to work at Walt’s Place. This was one of the best decisions I made in my life. I immediately was embraced in the family that is Walt’s Place. The children, while challenging at times, started to build real relationships with me- to which gave me the real feelings of influence that I was lacking with my experience at Hilltop. Every day I go into work after my classes and prepare the children a meal. We then work with them on their homework and then read with them- all children separated into groups based on grade level. And after all that business is done, we all get to play games together until their parents pick them up. While this program is only a few hours after school each weekday, I found myself caring for these children more than I had ever known. Walt’s Place proved to be the safe-haven for these children that most of them really needed for even the few hours of the day it is. I see each of them grow and change into a better version of themselves with each day I spend with them. Having the ability to build a relationship and having a child trust and listen to you the way these children are with me, is something I will always cherish. If I ever work for non-profit in my professional career path, I hope that experience will be just as fulfilling as Walt’s Place has been.

            I never thought that I could have such a good influence on these children, nor did I ever imagine that they would have such a positive effect on me too.

Dunebrook Profile (Jesse)

Each person in our class is responsible for profiling one nonprofit in Porter County in order to help our class evaluate who the recipient of our grant money should be. I had the opportunity to work with Dunebrook and get to learn more about their organization. While I chose them at random without knowing what they do, I later found out that my sorority has worked with them in the past which helped me connect to the agency. Dunebrook’s central work is around eliminating child abuse in the area, and they work to accomplish this mission by educating parents, connecting families with resources, and helping victims of child abuse go through the criminal justice program. When I met with Pam, the development director for Dunebrook, she explained to me that all of the programs Dunebrook offers are backed by thorough research and are proven to help families. We talked about how parenting can be tough and frustrating, even when the family is well off or has sufficient resources. When those things are missing, the task of raising healthy, safe, and happy children is even more difficult. By teaching parents how to cope when things are difficult and what they need to provide for their children, Dunebrook is helping to reduce the number of child abuse and neglect instances. However, they also work to raise awareness for the issue by reminding people of mandatory reporter laws and reinforcing the idea that abuse isn’t just the “family’s business” or something other people shouldn’t get involved in to help stop. Dunebrook has a clear passion and mission for helping families, and learning about their agency was a great experience for me.  

You can learn more about Dunebrook at: http://dunebrook.org

Washington Reflection (Scott)

Over our course, the class has encountered a number of diverse texts. While it took a few days to understand how a few of them directly related to philanthropy (i.e., “Bartleby the Scrivener” and The Blithedale Romance), every text has offered a different and insightful view on giving. Booker T. Washington’s Up from Slavery wasn’t an exception. Washington’s experience building Tuskegee emphasizes the importance of hard word that goes along with raising money. As Washington states, he is not “begging” and has never “begged” for money. In chapter XII (“Raising Money”), he highlights the struggle of transitioning through phases of an abundance of donations to receiving nothing at all. Washington goes to great lengths to prove the work he is doing is worth receiving money and states, “In meeting men, in many places, I have found that the happiest people are those who do the most for others; the most miserable are those who do the least” (111). Before this course, I never understood how non-profits operated and received enough money to sustain. So far Washington’s text helped me understand a little more, but unfortunately confirmed my incredulity: raising money is incredibly difficult. Like Jane Addams, Washington chronicles all the amazing work he’s done while remaining incredibly humble.

Although I wrestled with some texts to see the direct application of philanthropy, I found that they all offered an enlightening angle on the topic. Washington’s account is no exception.